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Our brain is not a hard drive

A brain is not a “hard drive.” The metaphor to computer hardware is fundamentally misleading: Devoid of consciousness and will, of any notion of human choice, what resemblance does this inanimate spinning object have in common with the human organism?

We have become too accustomed to thinking of ourselves as complicated biological machines. The science of our time has gone astray in this regard. We have learned to regard ourselves as little more than titrations of chemicals, as genome sequences. What a sad fate for a human being.

We don’t we rebel? Why don’t we shout from the rafters that we are not merely neurochemicals and neural pathways. We are human: we hurt, we love, we hope, we are besides ourselves with fear. We do not merely “react to a visual stimulus,” we see.

The articles in this section explore the human condition, sometimes from a “psychological” perspective, sometimes still more broadly.